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From: jmfbahciv on 14 Feb 2010 09:07
J. Clarke wrote:
> Mike Jr wrote:
>> What an absolutely horrible idea. Are we training scientist or
>> sheep? Looking at data is what we want scientist to learn to do.
>>
>> Did anybody read the Jack Vance Sci-fi classic "The Last Castle"?
>>
>> http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/compsimul.htm
>
> The problem comes from a lack of understanding of the nature of science.
> Educators treat it as a body of knowledge to be learned and not as a method
> of acquiring new knowledge--they may mention the latter in passing but what
> gets drilled into the students is that they have to know this body of
> knowledge.
>
> I'm sure that a student can be made to understand the concept of the phases
> of the moon using a computer simulation. The trouble is that he gets the
> notion that it's something abstract where if he learns it by direct
> observation then he recognizes that it's something that is happening in the
> real physical world and not in the probably deranged mind of some
> schoolteacher.

another problem with your example is that the student gets 2-D burnt
into his/her brain. The reason for the phases is 3-D.
Extrapolating to 4-D and then n-D will become impossible and produce
people like the ineducable ones who post here. Lots of the nuts
can't think in any geometry other than Euclidean.

/BAH
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